Such a tease...

At 2:00PM EST today, NASA has scheduled a conference on an "astrobiological finding that will impact the search for extraterrestrial life". When this was announced on Monday, the first thought that occurred to many was that life had been discovered somewhere else in the Solar System. Looking at the list of participants, I have to admit I thought it was a possibility. An extremely optimistic one, but a possibility nonetheless. There are several planetary moons in our solar system that have been proposed as potential hosts for life (Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Titan being two of the most prominent). But in my humble opinion, if NASA had discovered life elsewhere in the Universe, they wouldn't have waited a few days to tell everyone.

I figured I'd wait until 2:00PM today to write about what was actually going on; the journal Science has embargoed the details of the conference until that time. I have no desire whatsoever to break that embargo policy (particularly since I haven't seen the Science article). But I have to say something, particularly since Netherlands news website NOS has apparently, broken the story already. If what they are reporting is correct (and I'm fairly confident is either is, or is very close to what the conference will pertain to), today is going to be AMAZING.

Click the link to check out the story (you'll need to have Google translate it from Dutch to English, unless you can read Dutch) if you want to spoil the surprise, or tune into the NASA conference which will be broadcast on the web here or here.